Do These Foam Rolling Moves to Relieve Muscle Soreness from Your Upper Body
Foam rolling is a self-massage technique that uses foam roller equipment to reduce the tightness, tension, inflammation, and soreness in your muscles. It also increases your body’s flexibility and blood circulation to your soft tissues.
In the pro cheer community, the flexibility benefits of foam rolling can help you perform a lot of dance moves due to your body’s improved range of motion. And when it comes to fitness, the muscle soreness alleviating benefits make it easy to remove follow your workout program.
Here are the foam rolling techniques for your upper body that you should do for your workout session’s warmups, cooldowns, and muscle recovery activities.
1. Neck
You will need a low to a medium-density foam roller for this move. Rest your neck on the roller and move your neck left and right to alleviate stiffness and pain.
2. Upper Back
Medium-density roller types are required for the upper back roller exercise. Put the roller on the floor in a vertical position. Lay on it as if your head to your tailbone is parallel to the roller. Then lay your hands on the floor with your arms straight. You can either do angel snow movements using your arms or overhead claps.
3. Spine Alignment
Bumpy or medium-density foam rollers are best for this move. Lay down on the roller with each end parallel to your armpits. Cross your arms or put them behind your head, raise your lower body as if you’re doing a small bridge stand, and move forward to back.
4. Lower Back
Sit on the foam roller with the base of your tailbone. Slide forward to move the roller to your lower back. Then slide down to return to your base position. Do 13 reps or more until the tension in the area is gone.
5. Shoulders and Sides
Image source: Women’s Health
Foam rolling your shoulders and sides also works for tightness on your chest muscles. You can use firm rollers especially for intense soreness from strength training or medium-density rollers if the discomfort is minimal.
6. Lateral Arm Seam
The lats or latissimus dorsi foam rolling move needs to be done with a firm roller. It alleviates muscle discomfort from your side chest muscles after using pec fly machines or doing chest exercises.
7. Tricep
Tricep foam rolling is similar to lats rolling when it comes to execution. However, tricep rolling is best done using a bumpy roller and you need to engage your core in doing so.
Make your foam rolling exercises even more effective by applying your body’s weight to the area being massaged by the roller and using the right roller types. There will be a part two of this blog post that will cover rolling exercises for your lower body so stay tuned.
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